Baptists Caught Taking Kids Out Of Haiti

Sunday, January 31, 2010
Map of Haiti with Port-au-Prince shownImage via Wikipedia

Apparently, it is not enough that the Baptists brainwash Haitian children with their Christian mind poison but now they need to sneak them out of their country.

Haiti detains Americans taking kids across border

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Ten American Baptists were being held in the Haitian capital Sunday after trying take 33 children out of Haiti at a time of growing fears over possible child trafficking.
The church members, most from Idaho, said they were trying to rescue abandoned and traumatized children. But officials said they lacked the proper documents when they were arrested Friday night in a bus along with children from 2 months to 12 years old who had survived the catastrophic earthquake.
The group said its "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission" was an effort to help abandoned children by taking them to an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic.
"In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing," the group's spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, told The Associated Press at the judicial police headquarters in the capital, where the Americans were being held pending a Monday hearing before a judge.
The children, some of them sick and dehydrated, were taken to an orphanage run by Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages, which was trying to find their parents or close relatives, said a spokesman there, George Willeit.
"One child, an 8- or 9-year-old, said she thought she was going to some sort of summer or vacation camp in the Dominican Republic," Willeit said.
The Baptist group planned to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a 45-room hotel at Cabarete, a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, that they were converting into an orphanage, Silsby told the AP.
Whether they realized it or not, these Americans — the first known to be taken into custody since the Jan. 12 quake — put themselves in the middle of a firestorm in Haiti, where government leaders have suspended adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to child trafficking.
The quake apparently orphaned many children and left others separated from parents, adding to the difficulty of helping children in need while preventing exploitation of them.
While many legitimate adoption agencies and orphanages operate in Haiti, often run by religious groups, the intergovernmental International Organization for Migration reported in 2007 that bogus adoption agencies in Haiti were offering children to rich Haitians and foreigners in return for processing fees reaching US$10,000.
The agency said some Haitian parents were giving their children to traffickers in return for promises of financial help.
Silsby said the group, including members from Texas and Kansas, only had the best of intentions and paid no money for the children, whom she said they obtained from Haitian pastor Jean Sanbil of the Sharing Jesus Ministries.
Silsby, 40, of Boise, Idaho, was asked if she didn't consider it naive to cross the border without adoption papers at a time when Haitians are so concerned about child trafficking. "By no means are we any part of that. That's exactly what we are trying to combat," she said.
She said she hadn't been following news reports while in Haiti.
Social Affairs Minister Yves Cristallin told the AP that the Americans were suspected of taking part in an illegal adoption scheme.
Willeit, the SOS spokesman, said the children arrived at the orphanage" very hungry, very thirsty, some dehydrated." All had their names written on pink tape on their shirts.
Many children in Haitian orphanages aren't actually orphans but have been abandoned by family who cannot afford to care for them.
Children's rights groups have urged a halt to adoptions until it can be determined that the children have no relatives who can raise them.
The government now requires Prime Minister Max Bellerive to personally authorize the departure of any child as a way to prevent child trafficking.
UNICEF and other NGOs have been registering children who may have been separated from their parents. Relief workers are locating children at camps housing the homeless around the capital and are placing them in temporary shelters while they try to locate their parents or a more permanent home.
U.S. diplomats met with the detained Americans and gave them bug spray and field rations, according to Sean Lankford of Meridian, Idaho, whose wife and 18-year-old daughter were being held.
"They have to go in front of a judge on Monday," Lankford told the AP.
"There are allegations of child trafficking and that really couldn't be farther from the truth," he added. The children "were going to get the medical attention they needed. They were going to get the clothes and the food and the love they need to be healthy and to start recovering from the tragedy that just happened."
Silsby said they had documents from the Dominican government, but did not seek any paperwork from the Haitian authorities before taking the children to the border.
She said the children were brought to the Haitian pastor by distant relatives and only those with no close family would be put up for adoption.
The 10 Americans include members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, and the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. Friends and relatives have been in touch with them through text messages and phone calls, Lankford said.
The group had described its plans on a Web site where it asked for tax-deductible contributions to help it "gather" 100 orphans and bus them to Cabarete before building a more permanent orphanage in the Dominican town of Magante.
"Given the urgent needs from this earthquake, God has laid upon our hearts the need to go now versus waiting until the permanent facility is built," the group wrote.

 

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Tenn. SBoE Is Looking For A Fight

Saturday, January 30, 2010
Tennessee v. John T. Scopes Trial: John Thomas...John Thomas Scopes
Image by Smithsonian Institution via Flickr
What is it that these states do not get, particularly Tennessee. Did they not learn anything in 1926? No matter how many times the law has gone against SBoE's they keep coming back for more. You have to admire their persistence and their stupidity.

Tenn. OKs guidelines for teaching Bible

Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The state Board of Education has approved guidelines on how to teach the Bible in public high schools even though there’s concern the curriculum could be challenged in court.

The guidelines approved this week are in response to 2008 legislation, which authorized the state to create a course for a “nonsectarian, nonreligious academic study of the Bible.”

State officials said they tried to develop principles that are safe from legal challenge. But some say a state-approved Bible course could violate church and state separation, depending on who is teaching it.

Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee responded to concerns about religious activities in state public schools by sending out its guide — Know Your Rights: Religion in Public Schools — to schools systems across the state.

Hedy Weinberg, the state’s ACLU director, told The Tennessean that the state seemed sensitive to concerns that the classes could be used to try to convert individuals. However, there are few details on how the classes will be run.

“Whether these classes are constitutional depends on who teaches them and how they are taught,” she said. “The devil is in the details.”

Board member Richard Ray voted in favor of the standards, but is concerned potential lawsuits could create a distraction for schools.

“We have so much that needs to be done to elevate our kids in math and science, the focus of education should be right there,” he said.

Kent Richards, Old Testament professor at Emory University and executive director of the Society for Biblical Literature, has spent five years developing guides for teaching the Bible in public schools. He worked with Tennessee on this course.

Richards and other state officials agree that the focus must shift to properly training educators who will teach the course.

“One of the important things is that teachers are teaching about the Bible and not professing some religion or professing that the Bible is the only road to take,” Richards said. “That’s what every school and every school attorney is concerned about: not crossing that line.”

The course — which will teach students about the content of the Bible and its historical context — is an elective, meaning high schools can choose whether to offer it to students as a social studies credit, and students can decide whether to take it.

Before the state-approved curriculum, school districts could develop and offer their own courses on the Bible, and some still do. State social studies specialist Brenda Ables said the legislation actually complicates the issue because it doesn’t require districts with existing Bible courses to convert to the state’s curriculum.

“We think we’ve gotten this curriculum written to meet all guidelines that would uphold court challenges,” she said. “Those schools who had their own curriculum and were already teaching it will continue to do so until somebody tells them they can’t.”
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Culpepper County School District Bans Anne Frank

Friday, January 29, 2010
Anne FrankImage via Wikipedia
WTF!?! W-T-F? How can a district ban a book so critical to education and history. What's next, will the school district be claiming the Holocaust didn't happen?

School system in Va. won't teach version of Anne Frank book

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 29, 2010 



Culpeper County public school officials have decided to stop assigning a version of Anne Frank's diary, one of the most enduring symbols of the atrocities of the Nazi regime, after a parent complained that the book includes sexually explicit material and homosexual themes.

"The Diary of a Young Girl: the Definitive Edition," which was published on the 50th anniversary of Frank's death in a concentration camp, will not be used in the future, said James Allen, director of instruction for the 7,600-student system. The school system did not follow its own policy for handling complaints about instructional materials, Allen said.

The diary documents the daily life of a Jewish girl in Amsterdam during World War II. Frank started writing on her 13th birthday, shortly before her family went into hiding in an annex of an office building. The version of the diary in question includes passages previously excluded from the widely read original edition, first published in Dutch in 1947. That book was arranged by her father, the only survivor in her immediate family. Some of the extra passages detail her emerging sexual desires; others include unflattering descriptions of her mother and other people living together.

Allen said that the more recent version will remain in the school library and that the earlier version will be used in classes. The 1955 play based on Frank's experiences also has been a part of the eighth-grade curriculum for many years. The diary's "universal theme, that there is good in everyone, resonates with these kids," Allen said.
The decision was made in November and published in the Culpeper Star Exponent on Thursday.

Culpeper's policy on "public complaints about learning resources" calls for complaints to be submitted in writing and for a review committee to research the materials and deliberate, Allen said. In this case, the policy was not followed. Allen said the parent registered the complaint orally, no review committee was created and a decision was made quickly by at least one school administrator. He said he is uncertain about the details because he was out of town.

"The person came in, and the decision was made that day . . . and that's fine. We would like to have had it in writing. It just did not happen," Allen said.

Hasty decisions to restrict access to some books do "a disservice to students," said Angela Maycock, assistant director of the office for intellectual freedom at the American Library Association.

"Something that one individual finds controversial or offensive or objectionable may be really valuable to other learners in that community," she said.

The ALA has documented only six challenges to "The Diary of Anne Frank" since it began monitoring formal written complaints to remove or restrict books in 1990. Most of the concerns were about sexually explicit material, Maycock said. One record dating to 1983 from an Alabama textbook committee said the book was "a real downer" and called for its rejection from schools.

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Justice Department Investigates NY School District

Tuesday, January 26, 2010
United States Department of Justice Logo Downl...Image via Wikipedia
Yet again district administrators fail to protect our most vulnerable students. When will they learn?

MOHAWK, N.Y. (WKTV) - The United States Department of Justice is now intervening in the lawsuit of the gay Mohawk teenager who felt he was harassed at school.
Last August, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of a 14-year-old boy named Jacob who attended Jarvis High School in Mohawk. Now, months later there is word the U.S. Justice Department is investigating the district.
The NYCLU suit alleged Jacob was harassed for two years by other students for his sexual orientation. He has said he was even threatened with a knife and threatened he would be hung up on a flag pole. The suit alleges the district was made aware of the harassment, but did nothing to stop it.
The attorneys from the NYCLU that filed the initial lawsuit believe the federal investigation is good news for kids who go to school in Mohawk. NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman told NEWSChannel, "this means that there will be an independent assessment of the school district's commitment and procedures to ensure that every child who goes there, has a right to go there in a safe and nurturing environment, and it will ensure, I hope, that there is an end to homophobic bullying and harassment the school district has yet to get a handle on."
Mohawk Schools Superintendent Joyce Caputo issued a statement on the district's website on Friday. She said, "The Mohawk Central School District cooperated fully with representatives of the U.S. Justice Department back in December when they indicated an interest in this case. We'll continue to cooperate with them and welcome any recommendations they may provide as we go forward."
Caputo noted, "our school leadership is open to new ideas and recommendations on how it can take a more proactive role in teaching respect and appreciation for that diversity. in fact, the mohawk central school district has already conducted staff development programs on this topic and put a number of new anti-bullying programs and supports into place in the past year. Additional initiatives are currently in the planning and development stage."
In the statement, Caputo indicated the pending federal lawsuit is close to a settlement, but when asked about that, NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said she cannot comment on ongoing litigation.

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Doesn't He Have A God For That?

Sunday, January 24, 2010
Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase
Nope. Apparently he has an app for that.

A Christian aid worker was trapped in the rubble of a hotel after the earthquake in Haiti but instead of relying on his god to get him through his injuries he used an iPhone app. So much for looking to a god for help. But wait, he says, "he's grateful to God for getting him through the ordeal." Hold on now, didn't he use an iPhone app and get rescued by rescuers?

Trapped father survives with help of phone app

By Josh Levs, CNN
January 24, 2010 5:10 p.m. EST
 
(CNN) -- Alone in the darkness beneath layers of rubble, Dan Woolley felt blood streaming from his head and leg.
Then he remembered -- he had an app for that.
Woolley, an aid worker, husband, and father of two boys, followed instructions on his cell phone to survive the January 12 earthquake in Haiti.
"I had an app that had pre-downloaded all this information about treating wounds. So I looked up excessive bleeding and I looked up compound fracture," Woolley told CNN.
The application on his iPhone is filled with information about first aid and CPR from the American Heart Association. "So I knew I wasn't making mistakes," Woolley said. "That gave me confidence to treat my wounds properly."
Trapped in the ruins of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince, he used his shirt to bandage his leg, and tied his belt around the wound. To stop the bleeding on his head, he firmly pressed a sock to it.
Concerned he might have been experiencing shock, Woolley used the app to look up what to do. It warned him not to sleep. So he set his phone alarm to go off every 20 minutes.
Once the battery got down to less than 20 percent of its power, Woolley turned it off. By then, he says, he had trained his body not to sleep for long periods, drifting off only to wake up within minutes.
Woolley's job keeps him tech savvy. He oversees interactive projects for the Christian child advocacy organization Compassion International in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
With his injuries tended to, he wrote a note to his family in his journal: "I was in a big accident, an earthquake. Don't be upset at God. He always provides for his children even in hard times. I'm still praying that God will get me out, but he may not. But even so he will always take care of you."
The journal is stained with his blood.
After more than 60 hours, Woolley was pulled from the rubble.
"Those guys are rescue heroes," he said of the crew that pulled him out. 
His colleague David Hames has not been found. The two had been standing together when the earthquake struck and the Hotel Montana crumbled. They were making a film about poverty in Haiti and had just gotten back to the hotel, heading to the elevator in the lobby.
"Then all of a sudden just all craziness broke loose," Woolley said. "Convulsions of the ground around us, the walls started rippling and then falling on us. [Hames] yelled out, 'I think it's an earthquake!' I looked for someplace safe to jump to and there was no safe place."
When the shaking stopped, Woolley couldn't see. And his friend was not with him.
He turned on the focus light of a camera he was wearing around his neck, but he didn't have his glasses. "So I actually took some pictures and would look at the back of the lens of the camera and saw in one of those pictures the elevator that I ended up hobbling over to. And that became my safe place."
Once in the elevator, he used the app -- called "Pocket First Aid & CPR" from Jive Media -- to tend to his injuries. Woolley said his phone "was like a high-tech version of a Swiss Army knife that enabled me to treat my own injuries, track time, stay awake and stay alive."
Woolley heard voices of some other people trapped nearby, and they spoke with each other.
"About a day, maybe day and a half in, we heard rescuers, and they had a list of our names at that point, because they were able to talk to one of the people we were talking with. And so then it seemed like, OK, this is going to happen, we're actually going to get rescued.
"But then it just took a long time and there were times where I didn't hear anything or I'd hear drilling in a far part of the building and just didn't get any reassurance they were still coming for me," Woolley said.
"The scene outside was a lot more chaotic and less simple than I imagined in my head. ... But eventually they came for me and did an amazing rescue."
Back home now in Colorado Springs with his wife Christina and children Josh, 6, and Nathan, 3, Woolley said he's grateful to God for getting him through the ordeal.
"Happiness is a morning with ... family, filled with Legos, kissing boo-boos and normalcy."
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Christian Textbooks Still Not OK

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Chalk up another win for reason. I have seen some of these textbooks and they scare the shit out of me.

Victory again in California creationism case

In a January 12, 2010, ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a federal district court's summary judgment in favor of the University of California system in ACSI et al. v. Stearns et al. The case, originally filed in federal court in Los Angeles on August 25, 2005, centered on the University of California system's policies and statements relevant to evaluating the qualifications of applicants for admission. The plaintiffs — the Association of Christian Schools International, the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, California, and a handful of students at the school — charged that the university system violated the constitutional rights of applicants from Christian schools whose high school coursework is deemed inadequate preparation for college.
Creationism was not the only issue in the case, to be sure, but it was conspicuous. The plaintiffs objected to the university system's policy of rejecting high school biology courses that use textbooks published by Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books — Biology: God's Living Creation and Biology for Christian Schools — as "inconsistent with the viewpoints and knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community." Michael Behe, a proponent of "intelligent design" creationism, defended the textbooks, while Donald Kennedy and Francisco J. Ayala (a Supporter of NCSE) contended that they were inappropriate for use as the principal text in a college preparatory biology course. The trial judge was unpersuaded by Behe's defense.
After the trial judge granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment on August 8, 2008, the plaintiffs promptly appealed, asserting, inter alia, that the University of California's policy on high school biology courses "constitutes viewpoint discrimination, content discrimination, and content-based regulation, which conflict with the First Amendment." Of particular interest in the preparation from the appeal was the California Council of Science and Technology's amicus curiae brief. Coauthored by attorneys from Pepper Hamilton LLP who were part of the legal team representing the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the 2005 case over "intelligent design" creationism, the brief argued, "Students educated with these textbooks will not be adequately prepared for science courses."
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the trial court's ruling that the University of California's policy was constitutional on its face and as applied, writing (PDF), "The plaintiffs have not alleged facts showing any risk that UC's policy will lead to the suppression of speech. ... the plaintiffs fail to allege facts showing that this policy is discriminatory in any way. ... The district court correctly determined that UC's rejections of the Calvary [Baptist School] courses [including a biology class that used Biology: God's Living Creation] were reasonable and did not constitute viewpoint discrimination. ... The plaintiffs assert a myriad of legal arguments attacking the district court's decision, all of which lack merit." Documents from the case are available on NCSE's website, in a special section devoted to ACSI v. Stearns.

Atheists United - San Luis Obispo


Atheists United - San Luis Obispo just held their inaugural Meetup at Steynberg Gallery in San Luis Obispo. We had about 12 people show, which I think was fantastic.

We do not know exactly where the group is head but most are looking for intellectual stimulation and to show San Luis Obispo that we are good without god. Many of us are also looking to be active in the community in order to put a positive face on atheism.

If you live in the San Luis Obispo area check out our Meetup page and we hope to see you at the next meetup.

ACLU Sues LA County Probation and Schools

Monday, January 18, 2010

Working for a K12 institution similar to the one being sued by the ACLU and other civil rights organizations I am appalled that this is happening to our youth. Most of the kids in these institutions have been kicked by everyone by the time they get them. Now their last hope for any chance at a normal life is being taken away. Shame on these people.

Note: To get a sense of how some kids end up at these institutions that really aren't juvenile delinquents, please play the ACLU's School to Prison Pipeline game.

Landmark Federal Class-Action Lawsuit Charges Los Angeles County With Failure To Educate Youth In Probation Camps 

LOS ANGELES – An alliance of legal groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Southern California today filed a ground-breaking class-action lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Probation Department and top county education officials for their total failure to provide youth in the county's largest juvenile probation facility with basic and appropriate education. The failure has resulted in children not being adequately prepared to re-enter society and the workforce.

The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles, charges that county personnel – including administrators and teachers at the Challenger Memorial Youth Center in Lancaster, California – have in some instances relied on worksheets in lieu of substantive classroom instruction, denied all educational services to children who ask for help and failed to ensure that students participate in the required minimum school day.

"The conscience-shocking practices at Challenger are among the most egregious failures to deliver education and rehabilitative services to incarcerated youth ever documented in the nation, turning out juveniles who are functionally illiterate, unable to fill out job applications or medical forms, read menus or newspapers or vote in elections," said Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel for the ACLU of Southern California. "The lives of these young people matter, yet the county is releasing them in conditions which all but assure their failure to meaningfully reintegrate, having been denied even a semblance of an education for years upon years. This is a system out of control, with no accountability and no concern for the children under its charge."

The lawsuit is the result of a months-long investigation by the legal groups and details one recent instance of a young man, incarcerated in county probation camps for most of his high school years, who was awarded a high school diploma despite being unable to read or write. It also alleges that administrators and teachers directed students to leave classrooms to perform tasks such as painting buildings and removing weeds, while billing the state for instructional days as if these students were in class.

The Challenger center consists of six camps and a single school that serves about 650 students. It has been the target of a Department of Justice investigation over mistreatment and poor supervision of students, and was cited as having a "broken" school system in a 2009 Los Angeles County Probation Commission report. The lawsuit filed today goes beyond these findings and reveals startling new details about how county agencies and officials have abdicated their core responsibility of providing education to youths forced to attend school at Challenger.
 
"The failure to provide an adequate education to detained youth, many of whom are youth of color, only sets them up for failure and increases the odds that they will remain trapped in the school-to-prison-pipeline," said Catherine Kim, staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program. "We have a particular responsibility to ensure that our most vulnerable children be rehabilitated and prepared to successfully reintegrate into mainstream society."

Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the Los Angeles County Probation Department, the superintendent of the county's Office of Education, the director of that agency's juvenile court schools and Challenger's current principal. Along with the ACLU and the ACLU of Southern California, the lawsuit was filed by the Public Counsel Law Center and the Disability Rights Legal Center.

All three of the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit, like many other students at Challenger, were unlawfully removed from class numerous times. Challenger school staff refused to allow these removals to be questioned or appealed, depriving the students of their due process rights as well as the opportunity to learn.

"The students at Challenger deserve, and are legally entitled to, an education," said Laura Faer, director of the Children's Rights Project at Public Counsel Law Center. "What they get instead is abuse, retaliation and needless punishment. These actions are the hallmarks of an institution that consigns children to a life in the criminal justice system, which is exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to do. This is the moral equivalent of placing a child in handcuffs and throwing away the key." 

Among other things, the lawsuit seeks to force the county to provide intensive reading remediation services to current and former students at Challenger who are three or more years behind their chronological grade level in reading ability, and to prevent county officials from excluding students from classrooms without providing them with notice and an opportunity to challenge the basis for their removal.

"Put simply, the youth at Challenger are not being given a chance," said Carly Munson, a staff attorney with the Education Advocacy Program at the Disability Rights Legal Center. "It is time to stop these children from being treated like they are throw-away kids. The agencies we have sued today have both a moral and legal obligation to change their practices, and this is their opportunity to do it."

A copy of today's lawsuit is available online at: www.aclu.org/racial-justice/casey-et-al-v-robles-et-al-complaint

Additional information about the ACLU Racial Justice Program is available online at: www.aclu.org/racialjustice

Additional information about the ACLU of Southern California is available online at: www.aclu-sc.org

Additional information about the Public Counsel Law Center is available online at: www.publiccounsel.org

Additional information about the Disability Rights Legal Center is available online at: www.disabilityrightslegalcenter.org

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God's Computer

Sunday, January 17, 2010
I found this over at Gizmodo while reading my tech and gadget blogs.


You Know You're An Atheist When...

Saturday, January 2, 2010
Whist reading through my Google Alerts I found a provocative title that warranted further examination:  "You Know You're An Atheist When..."


It turns out it is a creationists list of a atheist's characteristics. There is nothing particularly new here, but the list is not exactly what this post is about. Although, just for fun here is a sampling:

# You blame God for the starvation, sickness, pain and suffering in the world...when, indeed, it is MAN's greed, politics, selfishness and apathy that not only causes, but also ignores the sick and the starving masses. We aren't our brothers' keepers....but we should be.
# You claim Creationists don't research on evolution websites before debating against it. Luckily you caught this useful weapon against Christians at the evolution site you learned all about creation doctrine from.
# You refuse to use the word "excruciating" because of its origins in describing the agonies of crucifixion. (ex crucis - "from the cross")
# You adhere to a false and realised version of history gained from watching Hollywood movies such as Inherit the Wind so that you can (for example) conclude: "the controversy over creation and evolution was settled way back in 1925, when Clarence Darrow eviscerated William Jennings Bryan in a country courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee."
# You're convinced that people only believe in God because they're afraid of going to hell...despite the fact that if there is no God, then there's probably no hell either.
# You deface money by scribbling God off of dollar bills.
# You claim that there is no way a book thousands of years old can be relevant today, but refuse to do the necessary homework to see how it could apply in modern situations, preferring instead to argue that God should have provided an updated version.
# You have never pondered the question: why did a really smart guy like Bertrand Russell write such a pathetically limp, uninformed and adolescent critique of Christianity in "Why I Am Not A Christian"?
# You believe any person who writes a book critical of Christianity is doing it for "education" purposes. Conversely, you believe that any person who writes a book defending Christianity is "just in it to make money."
The above list was written by Heathen Basher on Landover Baptist's forums. When I clicked on his profile link I was asked to register on the site, which I had no interest in doing. But, I noticed at the bottom of the page the following "disclaimer":

The information presented here is Biblically accurate. Opinions concerning the technical difficulties, fitness requirements, safety, and ratings of self-crucifixion, flagellation, stoning, destroying enemies of GOD utterly, without mercy, and other activities inherent in Christianity are subjective and may differ from yours or others' opinions; therefore be warned that you must exercise your own judgment as to the difficulty and your ability to safely protect yourself from the inherent risks and dangers. Do not use the information provided on this site unless you are a True Christian ™ who understands and accepts the risks of participating in these activities. Landover Baptist Church makes reasonable efforts to include accurate and up to date information on this website, errors or omissions sometimes occur, therefore the information contained on here is provided "as is" and without warranties of any kind either expressed or implied. Viewing, reading, or any other use of the information contained within this web site is purely the voluntary will of the viewer or user. You, 'the viewer' or 'user' shall not hold the publisher, owner, authors or other contributors of The Jesus Experience responsible for any incidents related directly or indirectly to the Experience. Landover Baptist Church, et. al., assumes no liability or responsibility for your actions.
 WYF?!? Seriously, WTF?
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